I’ve got a theory about Instant Messaging but in order to fully explore it, I need your help. I’d love to know how and when you use IM. A few questions to get you started:
How many times per day you have a conversation via IM? Do you hardly ever IM? Or do you find yourself having multiple conversations throughout the day? I’m also curious to know if those conversations are trivial or are they something you find integral to your day. Do you talk to friends, family, coworkers?
Anything you can tell me would be of great interest to me. Once I’ve got some feedback I’m going to post the results as well as talk a bit about my IM theory. Thanks in advance!
By Bob Walsh
All too often when people like me extol the benefits of apply Getting Things Done we try to accentuate the positive, pointing out all the good things about it. Well, there’s the flip side too, and its probably time you heard about it:
Not Getting Things Done is not just inefficient in a world that punishes inefficiency, it’s a guaranteed stress-filled existence that will shorten your life and make your remaining years miserable.
Consider:
* Forty-three percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress.
* Seventy-five to 90% of all doctor’s office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.
* Stress is linked to six of the leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.
-WebMDHealth
Stress will make you fat, stress will make you ugly, stress will kill you. While the younger you are the easier it is to shrug off a stressful week, the older you are the more you realize what stress costs you.
The tagline to David Allen’s first book is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” for a reason. Learning how to be productive and as stress free as you can in this day and age isn’t a way of getting ahead, it’s a way of staying alive.
Author Bio: Bob Walsh divides his time between improving and selling MasterList Professional, a personal task management application, writing a book for Apress (Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality) on how to start a self-funded startup, blogging here and at http://www.todoorelse.com, writing custom software applications for companies with needs and budgets and trying to remember what the words “time off” and “vacation” mean. He can be reached at [email protected].
By Keith
Have you ever worked with someone who can’t seem to do things on their own, someone who needs their hand held all the time? What about someone who questions everything that crosses their desk? Or maybe, you’ve experience the opposite end of the spectrum; someone who never asks for permission and is always begging for forgiveness? Or the micro-management type, who needs to be involved with everything at all times.
I’ve worked with all these people, and I’ve been them at one time or another. In my mind none of these ways of working is very healthy to a team environment and they’re almost always a roadblock to getting valuable things accomplished. Now, I’m not 100% sure how these behaviors start, but my guess is that it starts with trust.
Or lack thereof.
By Bob Walsh
So you’re Getting Things Done, you’ve defined your projects, implemented your productivity processes and are humming right along with the future’s so bright you need sunglasses, right?
Maybe not.
Are you actually being productive? Or do you think your being productive while all your time is being nibbled away by non-productive activities? Trust yourself – but verify you are Getting Things Done with a Time Audit.
By Bob Walsh
There was a great piece in the New York Times Magazine a few days ago about Microsoft’s efforts to find ways of taming the interrupt driven workstyle that has come to dominate us. I wish Microsoft well in its efforts, but the scientists look at it as something to accomplish “someday maybe” rather than right now.
We can’t wait for someday maybe. We have to take back control of our attention and our intention now.
By Keith
I’ve been really productive lately. As such I’ve had little time to devote to many of my pet projects. I’m finding out that it’s much better for my overall stress level to drop some things. In essence–to quit. Even if I wasn’t devoting time and energy to them, they were there, weighing on me in the back of my mind, nagging at me for attention.
It’s hard for me to give up on good ideas, but I feel that in order to do something great not only do you need a good idea to start with, you need to be able to focus on that idea and execute. It’s hard to focus when you have so many things going on. Sometimes you’ve got to let things go.
By Bob Walsh
One of the key tenets of Getting Things Done is getting your head clear so you focus on getting things done. Nowadays, with text, audio and video feeds from every major and minor news organization a click away, Google News, news alerts, RSS, IM and all the rest, you have about as much chance of getting your head clear as surviving 10 fire hoses turned full on at your face.
Too much news, way, way, way too much. All the news doesn’t fit: on paper, on your screen, in your head. Unless you consciously take control of when, where and how you get your general, sports, high tech and other news, your chances of getting things done, of creating work, will drown without you even realizing it.